The Bohemian
and the Redeemer

Even in his own time, much about the life of Josef Mysliveček remained obscure – possibly a deliberate choice for a man who valued his independence, and whose financial dealings brought him close to gaol on at least one occasion. Charles Burney, writing in 1773, asserted that Mysliveček ‘was brought up at a village school in Bohemia, and afterwards studied counterpoint at Prague’. In fact, he was the heir to a successful flour miller and inherited a part-share in several watermills on the Vltava in central Prague (one of which stood on the site of the current Smetana museum). He qualified as a Master Miller, before selling out of the family business in the early 1760s to study music, first in Prague, and then in Venice. Following the triumphant premiere of his opera Il Bellerofonte in Naples in 1767 he enjoyed a run of successes (including a setting of Metastasio’s La clemenza de Tito) that would make him the pre-eminent composer of opera seria in Italy in the 1770s.

Mysliveček never needed (or apparently wanted) to put down roots – he lived by his reputation and his genius, though this freelance lifestyle (which must have looked distinctly appealing to the young Mozart) rapidly depleted his family fortune. Exhaustion, just as much as disease, seems to have caused his early death after the failure of his 24th opera Armida in Milan in late 1779. When he died (in Rome, on 4 February 1781) he was living in poverty, and left only a few possessions: a sword, some loan documents, and a single outfit of the elegant clothing necessary for him to ply his trade. A gold watch remained in pawn, and a sympathetic English gentleman, James Barry (possibly one of Mysliveček’s students), paid for his funeral. But at the height of his success, Mysliveček’s reputation was unchallenged, and the quality of his finest music shows why. In 1928, the musicologist Felice Boghen, stumbling on a manuscript of the oratorio Abramo ed Isacco, announced it to the world as a lost masterpiece by Mozart.

No connoisseur in the 1770s would have made the same mistake. Oratorios occupied a particular place in the 18th-century musical ecosystem: ostensibly sacred works, they were typically performed during Lent, when theatres were closed and operas were therefore unstageable. Designed to be entertaining as well as edifying, but performed without scenery or costumes, they were effectively concert operas on religious subjects, and when they pleased an audience they could be almost as successful as staged operas. Mysliveček wrote Abramo ed Isacco for Lent 1776 and it received its premiere in the Casino della Nobiltà in Florence on 10 March that year, with the tenor Valentin Adamberger (Valentino Adamonti, Mozart’s first Belmonte) as Abraham. It was an immediate success, receiving at least 20 performances in Italy and beyond over the next few years – including the one that Mozart referred to, given by royal command at the Salvatortheater in Munich in Lent 1777. The entire run sold out.

By now, Mysliveček had an instinct for drama. Abramo ed Isacco sets a libretto by Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782), the pre-eminent opera seria librettist of the day, and the (passive) co-creator of 16 of Mysliveček’s 26 operas. It was entitled Isacco figura del Redentore (Isaac, figure of the Redeemer – Mysliveček seems to have changed the name for the Munich performance) and it was first published in 1740. More than thirty composers, including Jommelli and Dittersdorf, had set the same text prior to Mysliveček, and its appeal was clear. Metastasio had taken one of the most dramatic episodes of the Old Testament – God’s command, in the Book of Genesis, that Abraham should sacrifice his son Isaac – and given it an unambiguously Christian message. Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his only child is shown to prefigure the coming sacrifice of the Son by the Father upon the cross. Isaac is therefore the prototype of the Redeemer, a point that Metastasio makes clear in the closing sections of his libretto.

But more than that, Metastasio turns the biblical story into an emotionally-charged human drama, ripe for quasi-operatic treatment. As well as Abraham and Isaac, and an angelic messenger, Metastasio brings in Abraham’s wife Sarah, purely (as he admitted) to heighten the emotional stakes. ‘Scripture leaves it unclear whether Abraham informed his wife of the divine command to slaughter his son,’ he notes on the libretto. ‘We agree with those who believe that Sarah knew of the divine command – and this suits our project all the better, stirring the emotions and balancing the story.’ But in classic opera seria style, he also adds a completely fictional character, Gamari (a bass), to serve as confidant and comforter to Abraham. Emotional outbursts need a recipient, after all.

Mysliveček’s setting bursts into life with a brilliant orchestral Overture, and immediately throws us into a domestic scene between Abraham (sung by a tenor) and Isaac (originally written for the castrato Tommaso Guarducci). Although he makes only limited use of the chorus, Mysliveček gives full rein to his skills as a musical dramatist, writing richly characterized arias accompanied by the sizeable orchestra at his disposal. Abraham’s ‘Entra l’uomo’ is accompanied by a pair of bassoons; Isaac’s arias – befitting his status as a proto-Christ – are expansive, expressive and relatively bare of superfluous decoration. ‘A me le sue ritorte’ finds him accompanied by muted strings, and in the exquisite ‘Madre, amico, ah non piangete!’ – as he assures the distraught Sarah of his resignation to divine will – flutes and divided violas caress the vocal line. Sarah takes a central part in the Terzetto ‘Lascia che un bacio imprima’ at the end of Act I: father and son are present too, but only Sarah’s line remains constant, as the three family members explore the implications of God’s command around the unwavering certainty of Sarah’s maternal love.

And yet (and it’s a common response to late 18th-century sacred music) it all sounds gloriously operatic; even cheerful. The operatic qualities, of course, are intentional; the cheerfulness merits some comment. Mysliveček sets all but two numbers in major keys, and the oratorio begins, and closes, in the divine sunlight of C major. The reason lies in that original title, Isacco figura del Redentore. If this story is to be understood in the Christian sense that Metastasio and (clearly) Mysliveček intended, it’s as a promise of redemption: the events depicted cannot be anything other than good news.